An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Month: July 2020

Seasonal Selection – Deca-dence Episode 4

Our episode starts in a way that’s to formula, much like the last episode, but also much like the last episode, effective. Natsume enters live combat for the first time, and despite not being the best of the best just yet, she manages to hold on and put on a good show, dispatching Gadoll in her search for Pipe. During the fight, she catches the attention of her hero, Kurenai, the strongest fighting Tanker, and makes a good impression.

Aside from Kurenai seeming to have a long-time crush on Kaburagi, she also provides Natsume an introduction to The Power, letting her join the fight on an official basis. Everything seems about on track: at this point, we should have a series of minor battles, possibly in montage form, allowing Natsume to rise in rank and esteem before socking her with the next major turn; possibly the System finding out she’s a bug (she’s fairly free with the term after Kaburagi dropped it), perhaps something else, right? Wrong.

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Seasonal Selection – Deca-dence Episode 3

Last time on Deca-dence we changed our entire outlook on the state of the world. This time, we have a much more standard episode, but one that was also very needed for what’s ahead.

Specifically, this episode is mostly dedicated to a training montage. Natsume is learning how to fight the Gadoll from zero, or arguably less than zero, so spending time with Kaburagi in the “tutorial zone” grinding on the weak ones until she gets the hang of riding gravity waves, moving gracefully in the bubble fields, and killing her foes efficiently and effectively.

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A Show That Exists? – Granblue Fantasy (Season 1) Spoiler Review

A curious thing happened as I sat down to write my review for this week. I knew there was a show I’d intended to review, but for the life of me I could not remember what it was. I knew I had to have made note of it somewhere and so I looked, and I saw… Granblue Fantasy?

Granblue Fantasy?

Ah, right! Granblue Fantasy. I certainly saw a show by that name. It had characters, and a plot, that much was certain. And, um…

Okay, I’ll cut the comedy routine here. The point is that I didn’t find Granblue Fantasy particularly distinctive or memorable. In many ways it’s actually remarkable how standard it really is, so much so that I could quite easily refer to the characters and moments by the archetypes they evoke or the better characters from other media whose notes they’ve seemingly copied. Yet, at the same time, can I really consider it to be that bad, or worth scorn? Is it like Hundred where the laziness is insulting and noxious, or is it more like Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs, where being a largely unremarkable expression of a genre is just that, unremarkable?

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Sci-fi Pacifism and Hope – Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet Spoiler Review

In the future, Humanity has abandoned Earth, lost ages ago. Of the many colony ships that departed earth, only one is now known to remain, menaced constantly by spaceborne biological terrors. We follow a young mecha pilot as he sets out to protect his home from the enemy’s tentacles.

Wait, that was the pitch for Knights of Sidonia. Silly me, getting them confused. The pitch for Gargantia is… um, exactly the same setup, actually. But we’re only in space for half of the first episode. This time our main character sorties against the enemy, gets thrown through a hyperspace bypass, and crash-lands into a whole new world and a very different plot.

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Sci-fi Militarism and Conspiracy – Knights of Sidonia Spoiler Review

In the future, Humanity has abandoned Earth, lost ages ago. Of the many colony ships that departed Earth, only one is now known to remain, menaced constantly by spaceborne biological terrors. We follow a young mecha pilot as he sets out to protect his home from the enemy’s tentacles.

Sounds simple, right? As a setup, it promises some cool space battles, at least. Perhaps it otherwise sounds a little scarce or cliched, but it could still hold up. Remarkably, Knights of Sidonia reaches well beyond the ‘comfort zone’ of being in a robot fighting aliens and seizes a good deal more of what makes Science Fiction great.

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